FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

Oct. 6, 2018 (EIRNS)—The Russian President’s special envoy for the Middle East and African countries and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told TASS that the four-power summit on Syria—including Turkey, Russia, German and France—is in effect being blocked by the Europeans.

“I don’t know when such a meeting may take place,” he told TASS yesterday at the Dialogue of Civilizations Forum in Rhodes.

“Such a meeting between Turkey, France, Germany and Russia has been failing to take place until now due to the position of our Western, European partners, not because of Moscow.”

Such a summit has been the initiative of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with the backing of Russian President Vladimir Putin who hopes to hold it in the second half of October. Foreign policy aides to the four nations’ leaders met in Istanbul in mid-September to discuss a possible agenda for such a summit.

Bogdanov also told TASS that the second Syrian National Dialogue Congress may take place in Damascus, if Syrians agree to it. “It [the Congress] may continue in Sochi,” he said.

“However, just like the Astana format, the Sochi format can be held in any other place. Ideally, it would be good if it happened on the territory of Syria itself, so that Syrians would determine their own destiny, and we would help them on that matter.”

On the sale of the Russian S-300 missile defense systems to Syria, Bogdanov said that

“It is an element of boosting security, and, what is most important, it is not aimed at any third party. It is a purely defensive system geared to ensure security of our citizens, our servicemen at Hmeymim.”